


it was always me and you

by echoes_of_realities



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Partnership, Pre-Canon, a series of firsts, basically the origin story if how jake and amy became Jake and Amy, but it'll eventually come out, the next part is probably going to take forever tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 04:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11223048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoes_of_realities/pseuds/echoes_of_realities
Summary: When he was young, Jake thought that love was inevitable.And then Amy Santiago crashes into his life and he realizes he doesn’t have a clue what love is, but somehow it’s okay.But their partnership and friendship doesn’t happen right away, God no. In the beginning he can’t stand her, and he’s pretty sure that she thinks he’s the worst thing to ever happen to her.Or: Part one of a three-part series of firsts between Jake and Amy from pre-canon to just before season 1.





	it was always me and you

When he was young, Jake thought that love was inevitable. His father was a pilot and his mother was an art teacher and everything was amazing. His dad would fly in just to bring him soup when he was sick and kissed his mom through a smile, which was gross but inevitable. His father loved his mother and his mother loved his father and they both loved him. It was an unavoidable fact of the universe. 

But then he turns seven and his asshole of a dad walks out. Jake thinks love is fake, because the tears in his mom’s eyes the morning after his dad sneaks out into the middle of the night is an image he never really gets out of his head. The fact that his father never visits and never calls is made more painful by everyone telling him how much his father loved him, because if his father loved him so much, why wasn’t he here? Why wasn’t Jake enough for him? He rationalizes it by convincing himself that his dad had never loved him, that love is not real.

Then he turns thirteen and Jenny Gildenhorn is the most beautiful girl in his grade and is attending _his_ bar mitzvah. Jake thinks love is a choice, because when Jenny abandons him for Eddie Fung, Gina pops up beside Jake and drags him to the roof outside. She’s his best friend in the entire world and she’s holding a Gameboy she denies owning and the biggest piece of cake he’s ever seen in his life. They spend most of the night on the roof, squinting at the screen in the weak light from the moon and the streetlight and Gina reveals that she may or may not have stolen Jenny’s shoes after she took them off to dance with Fung. Gina dangles them enticingly in front of him and they laugh and laugh and laugh when they each throw one off the roof with all the strength giggling thirteen year olds can muster. Jake is grateful he chose Gina as his best friend. 

He joins the academy as soon as he turns twenty-one. He doesn’t really think about love because all he wants is to make detective. It consumes him and makes him feel alive. Gina texts him every other day with some crazy story of her travels. He meets Rosa and they become whatever counts as friends for her. She’s silent and deadly and occasionally smirks at him. He doesn’t think much about love, but he does think a lot about friendship, and his mom. He thinks about Gina and Rosa, who are so different from him but who he wouldn’t trade for anyone. He thinks about his mom, who wasn’t always there because she was trying so hard to support them both; he thinks about the late nights when she would open his door while he pretended to be asleep, waiting for the brush of her lips over his forehead. He thinks about how she always knew he wasn’t really asleep, and how he always knew that she knew.

When he makes detective he forgets almost everything. He lives for the thrill of solving a puzzle, of helping people find the closure he never got with his own father. He loves his job more than anything. Rosa works as a beat cop in another precinct and sometimes texts him; Gina texts him once a week while she works at two different mall kiosks and tries to make enough money to make ends meet. He doesn’t see them or his mom as much as he’d like, and sometimes he regrets that, but his job is amazing and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

And then Amy Santiago crashes into his life and he realizes he doesn’t have a clue what love is, but somehow that’s okay.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t happen right away, God no. In the beginning he can’t _stand_ her, and he’s pretty sure that she thinks he’s the _worst_ thing to ever happen to her.

He doesn’t really understand why she doesn’t trust him at first because, sure, he’s immature and childish and eats candy for breakfast like any self-respecting ten year-old dreams of, but he’s also a damn good detective, and he does, on occasion, fill out his paperwork. And sure, he does tease her relentlessly and may or may not have replaced all the paper in her binders with pictures of dogs, but she never lets an insult go unanswered and may or may not have hidden all of his toys on him in retaliation for the binder incident. Despite their mutual dislike, she immediately decides that there is something distrustful about him within seconds of meeting him. Which hurts, a little, because he’s always thought of himself as trustworthy.

It’s not until Rosa makes detective and joins the Nine-Nine about three months later that he finally realizes why Santiago doesn’t trust him. He’s a man who made detective after a couple years as a beat cop and exactly the minimum eighteen months in the Gang Unit where he made a career-changing bust. She’s a Cuban-American woman who worked twice as hard and almost twice the amount of time in Cold Cases than he did in the Gang Unit before she was even considered for the promotion. (Which is not to say he didn’t work hard, because he did, he worked damn hard, but the fact that she probably worked double that is enough to thoroughly impress him.) 

Jake has this realization because seeing Rosa brings back the memories of all the sexist and racist comments she accepted unflinching back at the academy.

He tries to tell Santiago this, to apologize, to say he doesn’t personally know what she’s going through but that he understands; but he kind of stumbles through the conversation and mostly completely butchers it. But something eases in Santiago’s face during his, quite frankly, horrendous  apology. Something warms her eyes, like a light lit behind them, and softens the tightness of her mouth. She holds up a hand and smiles at him (she _smiles_ at him, up until that point he thought she was physically incapable of it). “It’s okay, Peralta. It’s just, in my experience, detectives like you are used to drifting through life without any worry of discrimination. You don’t understand what it’s like.”

“I don’t know what it’s like,” he assures her.

Santiago nods and starts talking again before he can continue. “You don’t,” she agrees, “but I think I may have misjudged you.” She gives a half shrug, “You’re super immature and have no clue how to do paperwork. You do realize you actually have to fill it out, right? Also your desk should be a nationally recognized contamination zone. I mean, it’s probably ground zero for _so_ many diseases.” He holds a hand up to his chest in mock-pain and mouths _hurtful_ at her, but she just continues right over him. “And your diet is, quite frankly, horrifying—”

“Is this just going to be you insulting me?” Jake interrupts. She continues to ignore him.

“I mean, you really should have some sort of sugar-related disease by now. Between your sugar intake and your caffeine intake and the sugar _in_ your coffee intake you really shouldn’t still be alive.” He raises an eyebrow at her, to which she rolls her eyes. “ _But_ , Rosa said you once punched a guy out for being a sexist dick to her.”

Jake laughs nervously and grabs his detective shield where it hangs around his neck, straightening in against his chest. He had forgotten about that. “Yeah, and then Rosa almost punched _me_ out.”

There’s a hint of amusement to her otherwise serious expression. “The point is, I thought you were just one of those guys who didn’t realize what other people face. But I was wrong. You aren’t sexist and you aren’t racist, and the few times I’ve witnessed you being either, you apologized and fixed your behaviour. And though I would rather you didn’t punch anyone out for me, I’d like to think that, maybe, one day, we could have each other’s backs?” 

The smile that spreads across his face is smaller than any he had given Santiago before, but it’s also more sincere than any smile he’d given her before. “Definitely.”

She smiles at him again, which reveals the dimple at the corner of her mouth he hadn’t known was there, and sticks out her hand. “Let’s start again,” she offers.

He takes it with a grin.

It’s the first civil conversation they’ve had since being partnered. Jake thinks he could get used to it.

She’s still a suck-up and follows all rules without fail, and he’s still childish and eats more candy than reasonably healthy, and they still mock and tease each other relentlessly, but it gets a little easier to learn to trust her. And sometimes he makes her laugh with his antics and sometimes she inspires him to do his paperwork properly. 

You know, sometimes.

 

* * *

 

The first time he makes her coffee correctly she’s surprised, and suspicious.

Jake sets the mug of coffee in front of Santiago, who accepts it without looking up from her computer screen, a muttered thanks falling from her lips. It’s not until he settles at his desk that she looks up and, upon seeing him, glances down at the coffee with a frown set deep into her face. 

“Did you put anything funky in here?” she asks, not even attempting to disguise the suspicion in her voice.

“No,” he responds. She just stares at him unblinkingly. “I didn’t,” Jake insists impatiently. “And no one under the age of seventy-five says funky.”

“You said it just last week!” Santiago accuses.

“There’s no way that’s true,” Jake replies hotly, except for that fact that it _might_ be true.

“You definitely did! During the Johnston case. When we were going through his apartment you said,” she drops her voice an octave, “‘Something smells funky in here,’ and, okay, yeah, it did smell weird because of the whole decomposing body in the apartment, but you definitely said funky.”

Jake tries to stifle a laugh at her impression of him, but it doesn’t quite work, because a short burst of laughter escapes from his tightened lips. She also _might_ be right because he definitely said that exact sentence last week, but he has a reputation to uphold. He arranges his face in a scowl but a smile still pulls insistently at his lips, “I do _not_ sound like that!”

“You totally do,” Santiago replies with a smug grin. She takes a sip of coffee without thinking and hums in contentment, turning dark eyes on him, face alight with surprise. “You know how I take my coffee.”

Jake smoothes his detective shield against his chest. “Yeah, I figured I should finally learn instead of purposefully messing up your coffee.”

Santiago snorts at that and takes another sip. “Well I’ve had your coffee memorized since the first day.”

Jake frowns at her. “There’s no way that’s true,” he says but he’s unsure because, now that he’s thinking about it, on the rare occasions that Santiago did bring him coffee it was always perfect.

Her grin turns smug again. “Of course it is, you just pour cream and sugar coffee until it smells sickeningly sweet and boom, a perfect cup of coffee for one Jacob Peralta.”

Jake forces his mouth to close. “That,” he admits painfully, “is mostly true.”

“Two for Santiago, zero for Peralta,” she teases around the rim of her mug.

Jake groans loudly.

It’s kind of the first time they bond.

 

* * *

 

The first time she gets injured isn’t serious, and he only panics a _little_.

(Just the tiniest bit. _Honestly_.)

They’re sitting in her car outside of an abandoned building, watching for their perp at one of his usual meet places. They’ve been looking for this guy for nearly a month and both of them are more than a little frustrated with the case, more so now that they are passing the fourth hour of sitting in a stuffy car under the hot sun. It’s past the point where Jake’s getting antsy and Santiago’s getting annoyed when they see movement from the second storey. They both grin, far too excited about the chance of danger than should be reasonable. 

(Though really, they just both want a change of pace; they’ve already been through all the usual stakeout games. Twice.)

The entire building is in disarray. Santiago’s nose immediately scrunches up and Jake chuckles at her. They have their guns drawn and clear the first floor; moving to the second and clearing the lobby-like area at the top of the stairs before continuing down the hallway. They clear separate rooms, Jake on the right side and Santiago on the left. They’ve cleared a combined six rooms and are working on the seventh and eighth when it happens.

There’s a loud crashing from the left side room, accompanied by a pained shout. Jake’s heart stutters deep within his chest as he quickly finishes clearing the room in a cursory glance (Santiago would be horrified at the lack of protocol) before spinning on his heel and sprinting to the door.

He races out of his room to the one Santiago was clearing. A man twice his size is bolting out of the room and straight into Jake’s raised gun, his eyes wild and Santiago nowhere in sight. Jake’s stomach clenches until he hears a faint groan from the room behind the perp. 

“NYPD. Hands up.” The perp is surprisingly cooperative and holds his hands up by his head, before turning and allowing Jake to cuff him. “Santiago?” he calls out as he searches the perp for any weapons. “You okay?”

Santiago’s voice is pained from inside the room. “Yeah,” there’s a long pause, “I’m good.” Keeping one hand on the perp’s freakishly muscular arm, he peers into the room but doesn’t see her. His stomach is still tight and his heart hasn’t slowed it’s loud _thump-thump_ against his eardrums. 

The room is a mess. Dust floats in the sunlight, streaming in from the dirty windows, and there’s overturned furniture everywhere, pieces of broken wood and shredded cardboard scattered around the room, but no sign of his partner. He continues to scan the room, getting more and more frantic as his heart drowns out all other sounds.

His heart finally quiets when he sees movement near far corner of the room. Santiago is breathing heavily as she pushes herself up, gingerly holding her side. There’s no blood, which is good, he hopes. She looks back at what she had fallen on, grumbling something in Spanish that Rosa sometimes mutters and which he is, like, ninety-seven percent sure is an expletive. 

The recipient of Santiago’s cursing is a filing cabinet, laying on it’s side and looking as if it’s been there since the beginning of time. 

“Santiago?” 

She’s stands slowly, favouring her left side as she walks towards him, tentatively touching her right hand to a spot just below her ribs and hissing at the contact. “I’m good,” she repeats, not at all believably. The perp shifts beside him and Jake tightens his fingers around the perp’s bicep, barely able to wrap his hand around one side.

She limps over to him and glares at the perp, who fidgets beneath Jake’s hands with the force Santiago’s glare. Rosa is terrifying all the time, but Santiago is almost more so because he never really knows when she’ll going to go all scary-demon on him.

Jake grins at her. “I knew you liked paperwork but I never thought you’d actually fall for a filing cabinet,” he teases, because joking is safe and easy and for a moment there he thought he’d lost her.

She turns her chilling glare on him and the hair on the back of his neck stands on end; it’s totally worth it though. “Shut up, Peralta,” she growls. 

He leads them out of the building, slowing his pace as Santiago struggles to keep up.

“Hey, you’re sure you’re okay, right?” Jake asks once the perp is safely in the backseat of the car. “You must have hit that cabinet pretty hard.”

Santiago nods and starts to tell him she’s _fine_ but is interrupted by a wince and a hiss as she twists to look at him.

“I believe we have two very different definitions of fine, Santiago,” he replies drily.

She gives him a smile that’s more of a grimace than anything. “He just took me by surprise is all.”

She sits stiffly all the way back to the precinct, staring out her window and barely talking. Jake takes the perp up to holding, Santiago keeping up with him and only barely limping. It’s a terrible act though because her face is all pinch-y and even Rosa eyes her a little warily. When she leaves for the evidence room Jake doesn’t even try to disguise the fact that he’s following her.

It’s dark in the room, like usual, and he immediately locks the door behind him. 

“I’m _fine_ , Peralta,” Santiago insists before he says anything, not even looking back to confirm it’s him. Jake briefly considers messing with her, but immediately dismisses the idea at the much more pressing concern of checking whether or not Santiago is, in fact, fine.

“Just let me see.” She finally turns towards him, expression mostly annoyed but also tight with pain. “We don’t want you bleeding all over the place,” Jake adds, far more brightly than he feels because, oh God, what if really she is bleeding all over the place?

She rolls her eyes so hard her head tips backwards. “I’m _pretty_ sure I’d know if I was bleeding all over the place.”

“Humour me.”

She grumbles but turns away from him. There’s a long, silent moment as she untucks and then unbuttons her shirt. His gut churns uncomfortably with worry, images flashing across his eyes with equally implausible and horrifying situations. Once Santiago finishes she glances back at him over her shoulder, eyes dark and unreadable. Jake takes a slightly hesitant step towards her and grabs the bottom of her now loose shirt. He pulls it up away from her side towards her shoulders to assess the damage.

The bruise is blossoming blue and purple along her lower back and wraps up across her ribs, the edges fuzzy and more black than anything. There’s a straight, darker line that runs from the top of her hipbone up to the edge of her black sports bra. He lets out a low whistle. The bruise is magnificent, and he tells her so.

He knows she’s rolling her eyes without even seeing her face. The bruise seemingly worsens under his gaze. “That filing cabinet really did a number on you.”

“Yeah, I was no match for it’s metal corners,” Santiago agrees with a mock-pout.

Jake laughs and lets her shirt fall back against her. She turns back to him once it’s buttoned but she leaves it untucked. “Well,” he decides, “I think you’ll live.”

“Thanks, doc, I feel so relieved,” she says drolly.

“It will definitely be painful for, like, a week, my young patient.”

Santiago nods, unimpressed, her voice flat when she replies, “How will I ever survive?” 

Jake spreads his arms wide. “You’ll just have to remember your will to live.”

“And what, exactly, is that?”

He grins at her like it’s the most obvious thing in the world; she looks like she’s bracing for impact. “Why _me,_ of course!”

She groans but there’s a grin tugging at the corner of her lips. He laughs and they turn to leave. Just as he reaches the door, hand about to turn the knob, Santiago’s fingers curl around his bicep, eyes bright on his.

“Thanks, Peralta.”

Jake frowns, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “For what?”

“For having my back.”

 

* * *

 

The first time he embarrasses himself in front a superior officer in front of her is on Terry’s first day. 

Terry makes Sergeant about four months into their partnership, transferring to the Nine Nine almost immediately following his promotion.

It’s lunch, and as Jake is coming across the bullpen he gets distracted by Santiago moving something around on his desk and while he attempts to yell at her and balance his cell phone between his shoulder and his ear he forgets about the slices of room temperature pizza balanced on top of a bowl of cereal balanced on top of his mug of coffee.

Needless to say it doesn’t go well.

He’s in the middle of asking the cop on the other end of the phone to hold on for a minute and demanding what Santiago is doing on his perfectly messy desk when he trips over his untied shoelaces (that Santiago had warned him about when he stood and he elected to ignore, damn her) and goes sprawling on the floor.

Santiago whips around and her eyes go as wide as an owl’s in worry as she takes in the mess surrounding his prone body. “Peralta?” she asks in that slightly too-high concerned voice.

Jake extracts a hand from under his body to give her a thumbs up before pulling himself up into a sitting position.

While one slice of pizza is currently stuck to his shirt with a sticky combination of milk and lucky charms and coffee, the other slice remains more or less un-squished beside his knee. He grins and grabs the slice.

“Peralta! Gross!” Santiago exclaims, scrunching her face up in disgust as she watches the slice of pizza get closer to his mouth.

Jake sticks his tongue out before taking a huge bite of his slightly dusty and, frankly, disgusting floor-pizza, to prove a point, of course, when someone blocks out the lights above him.

“Detective, are you alright?” the massive shadow asks above him in what is probably the gentlest voice he’s ever heard from someone who is built like a tank (granted, his experience with people built like tanks are usually on the other side of a gun or high as a kite, so who knows).

“Just peachy,” Jake responds, pulling himself up and transferring his pizza to his left hand. “Jacob Peralta, the very best detective in the Nine-Nine,” he says brightly, offering a greasy hand to the man in front of him, ignoring Santiago’s scoff behind him.

“Terry Jeffords,” the man replies, delicately shaking his hand and trying to avoid the greasiest parts.

Jake’s pizza slips from his hand with a wet splat as it lands on the floor. “ _The_ Terry Jeffords?”

Terry’s eyebrows draw together slightly. “The Terry Jeffords,” he agrees.

Jake can feel Santiago hovering near his shoulder, nearly as starstruck as he is. “ _The_ Terry Jeffords from the Sixty-Fifth Precinct, Terry Jeffords?”

Terry smiles nervously. “The very same.”

“Dude you’re a legend,” Jake grins, arms flaying slightly and depositing coffee-milk-pizza sauce onto Terry’s crisp white shirt.

“Aw man,” he whines, “this is Terry’s favourite shirt.”

Jake cringes and can practically _hear_ Santiago’s smirk from beside him.

“Sergeant Jeffords,” Captain McGinley says behind them, “Come in.”

Terry nods at the Captain with a muttered “excuse me” as he heads towards the Captain’s office, only slipping slightly on the mess around Jake.

“Sorry Sarge,” Jake calls with a wince, receiving a vague wave in response.

As soon as the door shuts behind him Santiago bursts out laughing beside him. “That was a disaster,” she grins between bouts of giggles.

Jake just twitches as he steps on a slice of pizza. Santiago’s laughter redoubles in sound.

“What were you doing at my desk anyways?” Jake demands, trying to channel his embarrassment into anger. It doesn’t quite work and he just sounds whiny.

“I was dropping off your edited paperwork,” Santiago explains, and from the twinkle in her eyes he can tell she’s far to smug.

“Oh,” he replies intelligently. “Thanks.” And then, because he needs to regain his footing and wipe the smug grin off her face, he attempts an insult. “I may have made a fool out of myself, but at least I won’t be the ultimate kiss up.”

“Maybe so,” Santiago agrees around her laughter, “but at least I’ll never be a kiss up wearing my lunch.”

Jake sputters at her but has to concede her point.

 

* * *

 

The first time he finds out she has seven brothers he’s a little surprised but not that shocked because it explains so much.

“ _Seven_?” Jake shrieks. Santiago rolls her eyes and returns to her paperwork. “There’s _eight_ kids in your family? Your mom must be a superhero.”

She smiles at the files in front of her. “Yeah, she is.” 

Jake stares at her bowed head. “What are their names?” he asks, still stunned.

“Ed, Luís, Andrés, Fico, Herbie, Rafi, and Manolo,” Santiago answers without even pausing in filling out her paperwork. “I’m the fourth oldest.”

“How?” he asks before trailing off. 

She quirks an eyebrow at him, finally giving him her full attention. “‘How’ what?”

“How did you survive?”

Santiago laughs a little. “You learn real fast how to fight for a place at my house. I had a slight advantage over my brother’s because I was the only girl so it was hard to not notice me. Though, they never treated me like a girl,” she snorts, “Particularly when it came to getting seconds at the table. You have to make sure you get in close enough to slip under their arms,” she explains, making a weaving motion with her hand. “Plus, I have really sharp elbows.”

“You really do,” Jake agrees. She shoots him a mock glare. (She does though; he’s been on the receiving end of her jabs more often than not and he bruises like a peach.) He’s quiet for a brief moment before catching her eye. “Must have been hard, there being so many boys in the house. I mean your mom and you are outnumbered like two to seven.”

“You really need to retake math.”

He scoffs. “I know how to count.”

“Right,” Santiago smirks, drawing the word out. Her face relaxes after a second, smirk easing into a small smile. “It wasn’t so bad though. I mean, my brothers can all be jerks and were, like, super nosy, but there was always someone to talk to or play with. Plus, they all act tough but they’re actually giant teddy bears.”

“Sounds busy.” He can’t even imagine having that many people in his house for a day, let alone for his entire childhood.

She chuckles. “Oh it was. We all did at least two extracurricular activities. I’m pretty sure my parents each had a couple clones hidden somewhere.”

Jake’s face splits into a wide grin. “ _Nerd_ ,” he teases.

“As if you don’t love sci-fi.”

He tips his head back, looking down his nose at her in that snotty look all the upper class kids used to give him and Gina in high school. “I am much too refined for make-believe,” he replies in an exaggerated voice.

“Peralta, you ate three month-old Twinkies for breakfast this morning.”

He waves a hand at Santiago’s disgusted look. “They’re Twinkies, it’s not like they go bad.”

“That’s even worse!”

Jake shrugs in nonchalance; if his eating habits haven’t killed him yet they _probably_ weren’t going to. “Anyways,” he continues, “I’m too cool for sci-fi.” Santiago gives him a look that tells him she can see right through his blatant lie. “I only watch serious action-thrillers.”

She smirks, “Yeah, serious action films being _Die Hard_ , _Die Hard_ , and _Die Hard,_ ” she retorts, listing the movies on her fingers. “Oh! And _Die Hard_.”

“ _Die Hard_ is the best cop movie ever made. No contest,” Jake insists, practically daring her to argue (which she almost always does).

Santiago rolls her eyes but doesn’t continue the argument, instead there’s an inquisitive glint in her eyes. “Do you have siblings?”

“Nah. Just me, myself, and I,” he laughs.

She sees right through his bravado and studies him curiously. “Was it lonely?”

Jake relents, shrugging. “Sometimes. But I had Gina.” She nods, having heard many stories about the mischief Gina and him have gotten into over the years. “I can’t imagine having so many boys in the house though,” he adds. Santiago tilts her head at him in question. “Well my mom raised me, obviously, after- After my dad left.” He clears his throat a little, ignoring the warmth in her look. “And my nana lived just down the street so I saw her almost every day. And I’ve known Gina since kindergarten, which means I’ve known her mom since then too.” He shrugs again, but it’s really only a slight twitch in his right shoulder. “There wasn’t exactly any male role models in my life.” She doesn’t say anything, just stares at him with something akin to understanding.

“Are you two even doing any work?” an exasperated voice asks from above them.

Terry appears from nowhere (which is impressive, considering his size) and looms over their desks.

“Sarge!” Santiago squeaks at the same time that Jake gestures to his file with an “Of course!” in his most annoying voice (he knows because Santiago has ranked his various voices by irritation value).

“We were just- I mean we-” Santiago stutters.

Jake lets her struggle for a bit before finally swooping into save her. “We were having a deep talk. You know, real heart to heart stuff.” Terry just stares down at him. “So we could be better partners. Santiago needs to know every awesome and awe-inspiring fact about me and I need to know every boring and nerdy fact about her, which,” he leans closer to Terry with one hand to the side of his mouth, “are all _super_ boring, by the way.” Santiago rolls her eyes at him. Terry continues to stare down at him; Jake is pretty sure he hasn’t blinked for the last minute. “You know,” he adds, now the one who’s floundering, “for science?”

Terry sighs. “Just get back to work, _please_. Personal stuff can wait until you’re off the precinct’s time.”

Santiago’s cheeks barely darken as she glares at him, the real sign of the extent of her embarrassment is the pink brightness at the tips of her ears.

He grins widely at her.

 

* * *

 

The first time she has a anxiety attack he doesn’t have a clue what to do.

He’s never seen Santiago out of control and it’s terrifying. Her eyes are wide above flushed cheeks, pupils nearly obscuring the pretty brown of her irises. Her mouth is parted as she gasps, her chest heaving in attempts to get oxygen, shaking her entire body as she curls tighter into herself. Even her hair is coming loose from her severe ponytail, stray strands brushing against the nape of her neck and falling around her face.

“Santiago?” he begs, but he doesn’t beg because he’s not panicking. Definitely not. “Come on, tell me what’s wrong. Santiago? Santiago, please.”

She doesn’t respond to him as he talks, doesn’t give any indication that she can even see him because her eyes are unfocused and darting all over the evidence room.

“Santiago? Santiago?” Jake hovers a hand over her shoulder, before settling it there. Her eyes shot to his and she pulls away from him. “Santiago? It’s Jake, your immature partner, remember?” he pleads desperately. “Santiago? Amy? What is it?”

Santiago stops pulling away from him, so he lets his hand slip from her shoulder. Her eyes are still wild and her breathing is even choppier than it was.

“Is this an anxiety attack?” he asks, voice high with curiosity (it’s not panic; he is _not_ panicking).

Santiago takes a second to understand his words, and when she does her head moves in a jerky motion that’s probably a nod.

Anxiety attacks, he understands that, he can handle that (except that he can’t).

“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,” he rambles, “Okay, okay, we can do this. We just need to breathe, right Santiago? Just breathe? Okay? Come on, Amy. Breathe.”

Santiago doesn’t respond to him. 

“Amy? You need to breathe? Come on, Santiago, breathe. Right? You need to breathe.”

And then, suddenly, Jake knows what to do.

It’s as if someone hits him in the head with one of those florescent tubes of light (much cooler than a regular lightbulb, and he is not panicking). Images of eleven year-old Gina crouched in front of him, voice clothed in shadows from the gym bleachers while pre-teens scream and stomp above them and shoes squeak on the floor of the basketball court, the uneven dribbling of the ball thudding in time with his heartbeat in his ears. He can feel Gina’s hands on his arms as she counts their breathing with concerned eyes, the whisper of her grape-scented breath from the gum hidden between her cheek and upper teeth, the brush of her knees against his dirty shoes as she shifts closer. He can even hear her defensive growl as she tells some terrifying eighth graders to _get lost, or else_ and the sharpness of her voice as she snaps at their teacher for not realizing one of his students was having a panic attack while he was busy watching a dumb sports game.

Calm floods his limps, erasing the panic from his mind. He settles both of his hands on Santiago’s shoulders, running them across her silky blouse to settle on her upper arms. He leans closer and starts breathing deeply, counting his breaths slowly, keeping his voice low, until her eyes finally lock on his and the choppiness of her gasps starts to ease. 

After what feels more like years than minutes, her eyes start to clear, losing the blurriness and regaining the sharpness he’s used to. Jake lets out deep breath (but _not_ because he was panicking) and sits back on his heels, fluttering his hands against his lap while he tries to figure out what to to with them now that Santiago seems to have regained the control she so values.

She locks eyes with him and her face flushes. “Um,” she starts. 

“So,” he replies.

“I’m sorry,” she says, though she sounds more self-reprimanding than apologetic.

“No problem,” he replies, feeling more awkward around her than he has in a long time.

“I just- I mean sometimes I get- And then it’s-” Santiago stutters.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jake tries, but that sounds wrong so he starts again. “Uh, I mean, I get it.” But he kicks himself for that one too. “Um. You don’t need to apologize?”

She nods once, and then nods again, pulling her knees closer to her. “It’s just, you know, kind of weird when someone sees that for the first time.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, even if he doesn’t really understand. “Do you- Um. Do you have those a lot?”

Santiago seems to relax a little, the grip on her legs no longer white-knuckled. “Depends on what I’m going though I guess.”

“Oh,” Jake says, “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

They’re both silent for a while, Santiago picking at the fabric that covers her knees and Jake fluttering his hands against his thighs.

“Thanks,” Santiago finally says, standing up and offering him a hand.

“Anytime,” Jake says, accepting her hand and inwardly cringing. “I mean- Um, no problem?”

Her mouth twists into an understanding frown, which seems weird but he can’t think of any other way to describe it. They exit the evidence room and try to act normally for the rest of the day.

The first thing Jake does when he gets home that night is to google how to help someone having an anxiety attack.

 

* * *

 

The first time he finds out she wears glasses is during their first double shift.

It’s not so much that fact that she wears glasses that shocks him, it’s the fact that they’ve worked together for half a year and he didn’t know.

It’s past midnight and he’s mid-yawn when Santiago comes back from the bathroom, holding a small plastic container in her hands and squinting a little. Jake sits up straighter, staring at her as she carefully walks to her desk, before sitting and immediately rummaging through her bag. The small container is sitting on her desk, two small circles connected together. Jake thinks he knows what it is, but the possibility seems far too absurd. Especially since it is far too late for him to be awake.

“Ah ha,” Santiago murmurs, head reemerging from below her desk and holding a black case triumphantly.

Jake watches as she pulls glasses out of the case, frozen in amazement while she confirms his earlier suspicion that it is a contact lens case currently sitting a couple inches from her keyboard. Santiago unfolds the glasses and lifts them up to the light, frowning. She looks in the case and sighs, before picking her bag up off the ground and rummaging through it again. After a moment she huffs another sigh and glances up at him.

“Can I use your shirt?”

That snaps him out his stupor, and he’s so confused he doesn’t even tease her. “My shirt?”

“Yeah,” she says impatiently. “Your shirt. I need to clean my glasses but I forgot my cleaning cloth at home and my shirt is the wrong material,” she explains, gesturing to her blouse. 

“Um. Yeah, sure,” he replies. Santiago stands and rounds their desks, perching on the one clean space at the edge of his desk and handing him her glasses. Jake takes them dumbly and starts rubbing the glass with the edge of his t-shirt before handing them back. 

She holds them back up to the light, frowning deeply before handing them back. “That just made it worse. Try breathing on them first.”

Jake hesitates, bringing them close to his face and looking up at her in confusion. She rolls her eyes and mimes a huffing motion. He copies her and tries his second attempt at cleaning them. It must pass inspection because Santiago pushes them up her nose with only a small frown. The large frames obscure most of her face, making her eyes look owlish.

“Thanks,” she says, hopping down from his desk and moving back to hers.

He’s still dumbstruck, not even realizing he missed his opportunity to try them on until Santiago is concentrating on her computer again.

 

* * *

 

The first time he calls her his friend is seven months into their partnership.

He’s not really sure when Santiago becomes Amy in his head. There’s no definable moment in their partnership where they changed from coworkers to friends, when his partner Santiago became his friend Amy.

All he knows is that one day he’s telling his mom about a case him and Santiago are working and the next day he’s explaining the amazing lead Amy found. 

“Amy?” his mom asks.

“Yeah,” Jake replies, confused, “You know, Amy?”

“Um, no?” his mom replies.

“My partner of seven months, that Amy?”

“Oh!” his mom exclaims, sounding like she’s just had an epiphany (a word he pretended to ignore when Amy had taught it to him). “You mean Santiago.”

“Yeah,” Jake agrees, even more confused, “Who else would I mean?”

His mom laughs too loud and he pulls his phone away from his head quickly, fumbling to turn the volume down. “You’ve never called her Amy before.”

His mom’s voice is too quiet now so he turns the volume back up. “What do you mean? Of course I have,” though now that he thinks about it he’s not very certain.

His mom laughs again and he pulls the phone away from his ear. “You’ve always called her Santiago.”

“Right,” he agrees, because she just might be right and the last thing he needs is to get into an argument with his mom because he always loses.

That night he has to think about it, and realizes that at some point his by-the-rules and brown-nosing partner Santiago became his friend Amy, which is weird to think about but also makes his chest feel tight and warm, like it’s filled with sunshine, because now he has three people he can call his closest friends.

 

* * *

 

The first time he sees her in casual clothes is a little jarring, to say the least.

It’s not the first time he’s seen her outside of work, Rosa and Amy and him go to Shaw’s after solving big cases, and sometimes just because, but they always leave directly from work; which means that while Amy usually ditches her jacket and rolls her selves up, she’s still in her work clothes.

Which is why, when she opens the door on a lazy Sunday afternoon during a freakishly warm day in September, he’s shocked. She’s wearing jean shorts that are fraying at the edges, brushing against her mid-thigh, and a flowy white shirt that swirls around her when she moves; hair loose around her shoulders and face free of the minimal makeup she wears at work. She looks soft, Jake decides.

He whistles lowly and she rolls her eyes, the corner of her mouth quirking up to reveal the dimple there. “Shut up, Peralta.”

He chuckles and shifts on her step. He’s devoid of his usual layers, wearing a navy t-shirt and a pair of plaid shorts. (Because he isn’t an idiot; as much as he misses his undershirt and his plaid button-up and his hoodie and his leather jacket, it is _damn. hot._ ) She leans against the doorframe and he vaguely thinks he’s entered an alternate universe where Amy is casual and chill. “What’s up?” she asks. ( _Alternate. Universe._ )

Jake waves a file in the air at her and she gasps. “Peralta!” she scolds, voice pitched high with disapproval, “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ll get in if anyone finds out?”

He ignores that Amy excludes herself from the trouble he’d gets in, knowing she’d never turn him in (unless he, like, murdered someone, in which case he couldn’t really blame her). “ _If_ they find out,” he taunts.

“Peralta,” she warns.

“Santiago,” he whines. She glares at him. “C’mon, Amy. I’m so close to cracking this case, but I need another set of eyes.” He can see her resolve wavering. “I need _your_ eyes.” 

She sighs heavily but steps to the side and allows him entry to her apartment, muttering “I better not regret this” under her breath. She could never deny his charm. 

(Okay, fine. She could never deny a compliment of her detective skills, but Jake likes to believe it’s a special talent of his to get her to agree to almost anything.)

Amy closes the door behind him and leads him into her apartment. Jake follows her but bumps into her back when she abruptly stops. She turns on him with a suspicious glint in her eyes and he quickly backs away from the finger she shoves under his nose. “How did you know where I live?”

He shrugs and makes jazz hands (at least, that’s what Gina calls them), the file making that weird _fwipfwipfwip_ sound that paper makes when you shake it. “Magic?” he sing-asks.

She takes an advancing step towards him and Jake scurries away from her. “Okay, okay, okay! I may or may not have looked in your personal file?” the end of his explanation curls into a question and he briefly considers who’d turn her in when she inevitably murders him. Probably no one, he figures, because she’d hide his body too well.

“Peralta!”

He just grins.

 

* * *

 

The first time she falls asleep on a stakeout is hilarious.

She snores. Jake thinks it’s hysterical, Amy thinks it’s less so; which means, of course, that he teases her relentlessly about it.

“I do not _snore_ ,” she protests. It’s nearing five in the morning, right around the time when everything gets fuzzy and surreal at the edges. 

“You do to!”

“Do not!”

“Do to!”

“Do not!”

“Do to!”

“Do— Wait why am I arguing with you about this?” Amy rolls her eyes at herself.

Jake grins triumphantly, it’s not often he makes her act like a child right along with him. “You do snore,” he insists, “and I can prove it.”

He produces his phone with a flourish; she eyes it warily. “What did you do?” she asks, tone accusatory.

“Why, Amy, I’m insulted you think so lowly of—”

“Peralta.”

“I recorded you snoring as proof.”

She just sighs deeply and glares out the window. Jake fumbles with his phone, scrolling through the recordings but unable to find the one he just took. “No!” he shrieks.

Amy jerks to attention beside him, eyes furiously scanning the building across the street. “What? Did you see something?”

He has the grace to look apologetic. “No it’s not that.” 

She relaxes beside him. “Then what?”

“I didn’t save the recording,” he admits sheepishly.

The belly-deep laugh that comes out of her makes his insides go all warm and squishy. It’s the same feeling he got when Gina took his hand on the first day kindergarten and declared them best friends, the same feeling he got when Rosa stepped between him and some anti-Semitic dick the first week at the academy, the same feeling he got the first time he made his mom laugh after his asshole of a father left.

Amy turns to him, eyes bright and smile blinding. “I can’t believe you didn’t save your so-called _proof._ What an _amazing_ detective you are,” she giggles, somehow managing to form a complete sentence around her laughter.

Jake groans loudly and bangs his head against the headrest. “I am the _worst_ ,” he declares, but there’s a smile splitting his face too.

When her laughter finally settles he turns to her. “You also drool when you sleep.”

“Do not!”

“Do to!”

 

* * *

 

The first time she meets Gina is…not a complete disaster.

The position of civilian administrator was opened when Amy, while bored and calculating the precincts expenses like a _nerd_ , caught the (currently in jail) civilian administrator laundering money off Captain McGinley's pay check. (How Captain McGinley never noticed he was missing a third of his pay check for nearly a year is both a mystery and not at all surprising.)

Gina’s currently working as a assistant manager of a sunglass kiosk at the mall and, as much as she tells him not to, he worries about her.

Especially when the mall she is working at is robbed by armed criminals twice in a month.

And especially-especially when Gina’s solution is to carry extra hairspray and a lighter in her bag so she could ‘protect’ the kiosk with a flamethrower.

“It’s an easy job,” Jake tells her during their weekly movie night.

She crinkles her nose at him, whether because of his _mother-henning,_ as she calls it, or because of the fact that he might have sprayed gummy bear chunks all over his shirt, he’s not sure. 

“Better pay than the kiosk,” he continues, managing to cut himself off before explaining that she wouldn’t need a flamethrower. He has a funny feeling that might turn her off the job.

Gina shrugs and stares at her phone. “Elsa’s going to betray them.”

“Huh- Wha- How can you _possibly_ know that?” Jake sputters. “You haven’t even been watching the movie ‘cause you’re on your phone. And I _know_ you haven’t seen _The Last Crusade_ because you refused to watch it when we were kids cause it wasn’t ‘cool’ enough,” he exclaims.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she’s obviously only in it to get the grail.” 

Jake shakes his head and shoves more gummy bears in his mouth.

They get to Elsa’s betrayal and Gina’s required _told-you-so_ look when Gina turns careful eyes on him. “I’ll apply. But _only_ because the pay is better.”

Jake pumps his fist in the air, but soon regrets it when he realizes, on the day of Gina’s interview no less, that this requires Amy and Gina to meet (and Rosa, but he’s not too worried about that; for some reason he’s like ninety-seven percent sure that they’ll get along fine, and it will be a nightmare for him).

Gina, being Gina, immediately makes fun of Amy on her way into her interview, and Amy, being Amy, just shrugs it off and returns to her paperwork (which, now that he squints at it he’s sure it’s actually his). 

Jake continues to stare wide-eyed at Amy until she blows a long sigh through pursed lips and stares looks up at him with an annoyed pull of her eyebrows. “What?”

“That’s it?” Jake practically squeaks (except coolly, obviously).

Her mouth twists as she tilts her head at him in exasperated confusion.

“What’s it?”

Jake sputters a bit and points towards Captain McGinley's office and back at Amy.

Amy rolls her eyes and shrugs. “You’ve told me a _lot_ about Gina, I had no reservations about what she would be like.” 

Jake nods to himself, and then to Amy, and then to his computer as she returns to her paperwork (which is definitely his).

Gina exits Captain McGinley's office about seven minutes later with a smirk at him as she saunters to his desk.

“How’d it go?” Jake demands.

Gina flips her hair over her shoulder with brightly painted nails. “Perfectly, obviously. I’m amazing.”

Jake chuckles and raises his hand for a high fives, which she easily responds to with only a minor eye roll and a minuscule but genuine smile.

She checks her phone and doesn’t even look at him as she throws a “Later, lil’ pup” over her shoulder and heads towards the elevator.

“Later, goose.”

“Bye, Gina,” Amy chimes in.

“Ugh,” Gina replies as she leaves.

Jake calls it a success… Sort of.

 

* * *

 

The first time he sees her drunk is the night before their first Halloween as partners, right after they close their first major case.

They’re at Shaw’s celebrating solving their first red ball together, though celebrating is maybe a little too generous of a word. Most of the uniforms and other detectives are celebrating, their squad is a little more subdued.

Jake’s halfway through his third beer when he realizes Amy is nowhere in sight. Terry doesn’t see him slip away, but Rosa watches him steadily, dark eyes glinting in the dim bar.

He finds Amy on the roof, sitting with her back to the small wall separating the cement floor from the open air three storeys up. Her head is tipped back, staring unseeingly at the cloudy sky, hair coming out of her ponytail and brushing against her neck. He lets the door swing shut with a bang but Amy doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even blink. When her eyes finally met his she doesn’t seem surprised at his presence.

“We caught him, but that’s not going to bring their mom back,” Amy says. Her voice is steady and quiet, carrying across the chill of October hanging in the air.

Jake sighs heavily and crosses the roof, easing into the empty space beside her, shoulders brushing together. “I know,” he says on an exhale. He offers her his beer and she takes a long drink from it before passing it back.

“It sucks,” she finally says.

Sirens wail below and tires screech, the sound of the city constant even on the relative quiet of the roof.

“Yeah,” Jake agrees. Her head falls onto his shoulder after a while and they sit there in the semi-darkness, the moon obscured by dark clouds and the streetlights below casting the roof in shadows. 

After a long moment Amy sits up and he can see the traces of anger and pain wiped away, replaced with something hard and just a little bit chilling. She stands and offers him a hand, hauling him to his feet with a strength that never fails to amaze him. “Let’s go get drunk.”

“Yeah,” Jake says, desperate for any sort of release. He drowns the last of his beer and follows Amy back into the bar.

Nobody really notices them slink back into the bar. Terry has already left and Rosa is sitting on a barstool and scaring away anyone who dares get too close. Jake and Amy slide into a booth in the far corner with new drinks, thighs brushing together and sitting in silence. Rosa leaves about twenty minutes later with a single nod in their direction. Jake and Amy continue drinking.

They don’t actually get blackout drunk, but drunk enough for Amy to pass into six-drink Amy and for Jake to need Amy’s shoulders for support as he walks.

Eventually they end up back at her place, both a little too drunk and both a little too pained to be alone that night. They watch mindless movies until they fall asleep on the couch, her head on his shoulder and his on hers, trying to fight off the others demons even in sleep.

 

* * *

 

The first time they make a bet goes better than anyone thought.

(Specifically Terry, Terry thought it would end terribly.)

The bet is dumb but entertaining. He bets that he can get her a better Christmas gift for her than she can for him. It’s ridiculous and trivial and it brings out the most competitive sides of them. There’s trash talking and everything, even if Amy’s is less than insulting and his just involves telling her to have fun with various body parts (including but not limited to her face, her elbow, and her big toe).

Terry warns them that this bet could cause a rift in their partnership, Jake ignores his advice and Amy, stupidly competitive Amy, just ups the ante by betting that her gift would not only be better, but also make him cry.

Jake grins until his face hurts, because there is _no_ way that any gift _Amy Santiago_ can come up with would make him _cry_.

He’s wrong, because the (super cheesy) scrapbook she gets him, filled to the brim of all his friends and him from ridiculous pictures she took of him and Rosa to ridiculous selfies with Gina he posted on Facebook, easily beats the grammar mug and weird adult-y chocolate he gets her. 

He tears up, which definitely shouldn’t count as _making him cry,_ but he’s outvoted by Terry and Rosa _and_ Gina and has to admit defeat.

The dance Amy does in celebration is almost worth it though.

It’s the start of a very long trend of ridiculous bets.

(He’d never tell anyone, but the picture of Terry lifting him, Rosa, and Amy in a bear hug while Gina posed beside them was his absolute favourite and may or may not have become the desktop screen on his computer at home for three years straight.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

The first time she tells him she wants to be captain is in a dark corner booth of Shaw’s, celebrating Gina’s (official) new job as Captain McGinley's administrative assistant (because Gina, being Gina, has already made herself comfortable at the desk long before she was technically hired).

He’s not surprised at all. The first thing he noticed about her way back when she was assigned as his partner was her seemingly boundless ambition (well okay, the _very_ first thing he noticed about was her annoying perfectionism and freakish persistence, but her ambition was glaringly obvious too).

“What about you?” she asks, eyes glinting in the dim light of the bar.

Jake shrugs and takes a swig of his beer. “Nah, I think I’ll stay as the number one detective of the Nine-Nine.”

“You mean- You mean you _don’t_ want to be captain?” She’s so shocked she doesn’t even (wrongly) correct him on who’s the best detective (which is totally not her).

He shrugs again. “I dunno.” Amy just blinks at him, lips parted slightly. “I mean,” he continues, “it’d be pretty cool to have my own precinct, just think of how many people I could boss around to do whatever I want.”

“That’s not how being a captain works,” she corrects, talking right over the last half of his sentence.

He grins at her and then sobers. “I never really wanted to be captain when I joined the force anyways. There were enough cocky assholes who were sure they were going to be the next big shot captain and, I dunno, I guess it kinda turned me off the whole thing.” Amy hums beside him, and Jake can feel her eyes on his face but he stares resolutely at the beer in his hands, slowing spinning it around. “I mean, I joined the force because I wanted to help people, you know? I wanted to make a difference. And I guess after my dad left, watching my mom work so hard to keep me safe made me realize I wanted to be like her. I wanted to work hard and protect the people in my life, and being a cop seemed like the best way to do that. And I love being a detective, I love solving puzzles and putting away bad guys, but I also love giving people the closure that I never got from my dad.” 

He’s spinning the bottle faster now, condensation gathering on his fingertips. His chest feels tight and he refuses to look at Amy and see the judgement he’s sure is there. He continues to spiral until he feels a gentle pressure on his arm. Jake’s eyes shoot to his arm and, seeing Amy’s hand settled there, dart to hers without his conscious permission. Her gaze is clear and open and he’s a little embarrassed that he ever thought she would ever judge him about this.

“And because of _Die Hard,_ ” she jokes quietly, but her eyes are warm on his and he knows that she’s just trying to ease the tension, to bring him back into himself. He appreciates it. 

(He also appreciates that he doesn’t have to tell her to keep this between them, that he doesn’t have to wonder if she understands any of his ramblings, the brightness of her eyes and the warmth of her hand on his arm are enough.)

“Besides, John McClane wasn’t a captain,” she adds.

“And think of all the paperwork a captain has to do,” Jake agrees, groaning.

“Mmm.”

“You’ll love that.”

Amy nods, one side of her mouth quirking up. “I will,” she sighs dreamily.

He laughs a little and glances at her before focusing on his beer once again, mood easing back towards serious. “Being a captain is a lot of work, and you don’t get to solve as many cases, you know?” he asks, implying his question of why _she_ wants to be a captain. “And that’s one of my favourite parts of the job, working cases. I don’t know if I could give that up, even for the honour of being captain.”

He senses more than sees her nod beside him. “That’s true. But you do get to work some cases, and I guess I just want to be the person everyone goes to with their problems, be able to help those who help the public.”

Jake eyes her. “That’s not the only reason.” Amy gives him a self-deprecating smile; he knows her far too well.

She looks across the bar to where the rest of the squad are lingering. Rosa is sitting gloomily on a barstool but her eyes are amused as she watches Gina shamelessly flirt with the cute guy _and_ his girlfriend while the Sarge looms behind them, fondly shaking his head.

Amy glances down at her beer before meeting his eyes. “I guess I also want to prove to everyone who doubted me that I can do it. My family loves me but I don’t think they ever really thought dorky Amy could ever be a cop, so they were pretty shocked when I actually applied for the academy, and even more so when I got in. I mean, I got a degree in art history, so they never really believed me when I told them I wanted to be a cop.” Amy’s nose crinkles as she continues, “And of course the countless assholes who think because I’m Latina I’d never be good enough to be a captain. I just want to prove to them that I can do it.” She shrugs in a failed attempt at nonchalance. “And to myself, mostly,” she murmurs, nearly inaudible.

Jake settles his hand on her forearm, trying to return her earlier gesture. She catches his gaze from under her lashes, face easing into a gentle smile.

“Well in that case, I’ll just stick to being your number one detective.” He suddenly gasps in glee, turning his whole body to face her. “You know, when you’re captain you aren’t technically a detective anymore, making _me_ the undisputed best detective ever.”

She rolls her eyes and shoves his shoulder. “In your dreams, Peralta. It takes the best detective to make captain.”

“Yeah right,” he scoffs.

She grins at him.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time they celebrate an anniversary together he’s sporting a black eye and her nose is bleeding heavily into a split lip.

It’s probably super tacky, but they celebrate their anniversary of becoming partners from that first understanding between them three months into being assigned together, when they truly became _partners_.

“You know, we have to stop meeting like this,” Jake tells her from the back of an ambulance. 

“Come on,” her grin is bloody and her face shines blue and red from the police lights, and it’s more creepy than he’ll ever admit, “it’s almost a habit by this point.”

The paramedic fusses above him and presses ice onto Jake’s face, before going after Amy with a handful of gauze. When the paramedic forces her to sit beside Jake most of the blood from her face is gone, soaking the gauze through. She’s got a handful pressed to her nose, elbow barely missing his face as she pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Shaw’s?” she mumbles around the gauze.

“Of course,” Jake scoffs, wincing as the answer makes his cheek move

It’s barely half an hour before they’re sitting at two barstools and downing their second beers; Terry had offered to finish up at the scene, allowing Jake and Amy to go home and get some rest (they didn’t tell him about their plans to do exactly the opposite of that, of course).

“This time last year I was brainstorming all the ways I could prank you,” Jake tells her with a broad grin.

“And I was complaining to my mom about how terrible you are.”

“What?” he laughs.

She grins at him and clinks her beer against his. “We’ve come a long way since then,” she says after taking a swallow of her beer.

“Yeah, I thought you were super stuck up and no fun,” Jake says with a small smile. “But you’re alright, I guess.”

Amy’s smile is soft, the ever elusive dimple standing out more prominently. “I still think you’re a child,” she ignores his protests as she continues, “but there’s no one I’d rather have as a partner.”

Jake’s face eases into his more genuine smile. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

 

* * *

 

The first time she breaks in front of him is terrifying.

He’s not really sure what set her off, only that when she shows up at his apartment in the pouring rain with red-rimmed eyes and hiccupping breaths his heart plummets to somewhere past his knees.

He finds his only towel, which he had just washed a couple of days ago, and which he’s sure Amy would care deeply about under normal circumstances, and wraps it tight around her before bringing her to the couch.

He wonders how Amy, who looks like she could carry mountains on her shoulders just from the sheer force of her determination, can seem so small. Her body is shaking with mismatched breaths and she’s crumbling, like the force of nature that she is finally turned on her and knocked her out cold.

He can’t do much more than wrap his arms around her trembling shoulders and hold on, wishing he could will her back together from sheer force of will, but he knows he can’t, so he just lets her continue to sob into his shoulder and hopes the hand that he rubs up and down her back has some semblance of comfort to it.

Jake never does find out why she showed up to his apartment in pieces at 1:44 on a Tuesday morning, but once she exhausts herself and finally falls asleep on his shoulder he starts thinking maybe it’s enough that he’s simply there.

 

* * *

 

The first time he calls her Ames he’s delirious with painkillers.

He doesn’t even realize he does it at first, until Amy’s shocked face kind of registers somewhere in the part of his brain that’s not concerned with how many fingers he can wiggle at once.

“What?” Jake mumbles, leaning back to look down his nose at her because that’s the only way her face will swim into focus.

Amy blinks out of her stupor and shakes her head. “Oh, um, it’s nothing.”

“C’mon Ames, you can tell me.” 

She blinks at him again, her face a little fuzzy at the edges. “It’s just,” she trails off. He discovers he can wiggle his toes at the same time as his fingers and is so enthralled by that fact that he almost misses her response. “It’s just, you called me Ames.”

“I did?” His face scrunches up in confusion. 

She clears her throat. “Uh, yeah, you did.”

“Oh,” he says cleverly. “Is that okay? Cause I can definitely take it back, since no one said no take backs. I mean I can just call you Santiago. Or, like, detective, or ma’am, if you prefer, because you like professionalism and that’s super professional and I’m all about the professionalism-ness and—”

“Jake,” Amy interrupts softly, something light in her eyes he doesn't think he could interpret even if he wasn’t high as a kite. “It’s okay. It just surprised me a little because no one besides my brothers have ever called me that.” 

He starts to babble again. “You sure? Because I can stop immediately, or like whenever the world stops spinning, but that would be the end of the world so maybe not then,” Jake slurs, because, even in his drugged up state, his half-muddled mind doesn’t want to inadvertently insult her. (Because, sure, they tease each other all the time, it’s half the fun of working at the Nine-Nine, but he’d never do or say something that would actually hurt her. He knows her boundaries and she knows his, it’s why they work so well together. And that’s way too a coherent thought to have while he’s high as a kite, which is why he is so easily distracted by the fact that her fingers can move too.)

He grabs her hands and starts moving her hands in amazement, distracted by how slim and pretty her fingers are, until her gentle giggle above him forces him to be distracted by how pretty her general face is.

“You’re sure?” he repeats, dazed by the slope of her nose and the curl of her mouth and the sparkle in her eyes.

Amy’s smile is softer than any he’s ever seen. “I’m sure.” There’s a long moment before she speaks again. “Besides,” she says, almost shyly, “I kind of like it.”

 

* * *

 

The first time he tells her, _really_ tells her, about his father is during their second Thanksgiving.

They’re both scheduled to work, with only minor grumbling from Amy about missing supper with her family. He doesn’t miss the slight relief that crinkles her eyes.

“What?” he teases, “Too crazy even for you?”

She rolls her eyes and bumps her shoulder against his. Jake convinced her to eat on the couch with him for their dinner break because it’s how he’s spent Thanksgiving for years, that, and seeing Amy-perfectly-composed-Santiago eat on the couch is far more amusing than he thought it would be (and he thought it would be pretty amusing).

“I mean I love them and all, but _god_ there’s a lot of them,” she explains.

“How bad could it be?” he asks, tempering the bitter, lonely child in him. 

“Well,” Amy balances her sandwich on her knees, holding her hands up to count on her fingers, “there’s mamá and papá, Ed and Novia and my niece and nephew, Luís, Andrés and whoever he’s dating right now, Fico and Charlie and my niece, Herbie and his friend, Manolo, mi abuela, my aunt and uncle, my great-aunt Isabel, and three of my cousins and their kids. I don’t think Rafi’s going, but he never tells anyone what he’s doing so who knows.” She pauses for a second, muttering under her breath as she quickly sticks up fingers to count. “So almost thirty of us?”

Jake blinks in surprise. “Okay, okay, _fine_ ,” he allows, “that _is_ a lot of people.” He shoots her a grin that she easily returns.

Amy laughs. “Yeah. And as much as I love them,” her voice is a little higher than usual and he can already tell she’s about to start spiralling, “I don’t know if I could handle them right now because they’re just so _loud_ and _nosey_ and I don’t think that-”

“Hey,” he pokes her in the arm with a small grin, “You don’t have to justify it to me.” Jake hopes she doesn’t hear the pleading in his voice for her to stop working herself up, because he sure as hell can.

Amy exhales on a sigh, breathing deeply for a few moments before meeting his eyes with a grateful smile. “Thanks,” she says softly.

They eat in silence for a while, until Amy speaks up beside him, voice still quiet.

“What about you? Were you going to have supper with your mom?”

“Oh, no,” he says dumbly. “I’m, uh, I mean, I’m pretty sure she’s working or something.”

“Jake!” she exclaims, sounding almost scandalized.

“What?”

“You didn’t even ask her?”

Jake shrugs, standing to throw his trash out, suddenly not very hungry anymore. “No.”

Amy frowns at him thoughtfully, and it makes the skin on the back of his neck crawl because that’s her _I-think-you’re-being-dumb-but-I-understand-why_ look.

“I just-” Jake huffs a frustrated sigh. “Thanksgiving’s rough, you know? And ever since my dad left I never really,” he trails off. “It’s never been the same.”

“You’re scared,” Amy mumbles softly, arm brushing his. He jumps; he hadn’t even heard her get up.

“Psh, Jacob Peralta? Scared?” he scoffs, but it’s lacking his usual mock-conviction. 

“I think you might be.” Amy’s eyebrows are drawn together and Jake wants to do everything he can to erase the sympathy on her face. 

“It’s none of your business anyways,” he snaps, but he forgets that this is Amy Santiago he is dealing with, who is nothing if not freakishly persistent. 

Her face never wavers, eyes locked on his. “You’re my friend and you’re hurting, of course it’s my business.”

“We’re friends?” he teases weakly.

“Of course we’re friends, dummy.”

“Wow,” Jake says, drawing the word out.

“You never really told me about him.” Amy’s voice is firm but gentle, and he automatically knows she’d back off if he told her to, except it’s been such a long time since he’s told anyone about his dad that the words are practically screaming to get out.

“Yeah well,” he finally says, the bitter child in him taking control of his brain and his mouth and his body and his everything, “He never really told me about him either.”

Amy’s eyes are steady on his.

Jake huffs a small laugh, more a release of air than anything. “He, uh, he left when I was seven.” Amy doesn’t say anything, just watches him. “One night he was putting me to bed and the next morning he was just gone. My mom cried a lot that first day, and then the next day she was back to being ridiculously strong as if our world hadn’t just flipped on its head. She got another job on top of teaching art at the elementary school so she could make enough to pay rent and for food and stuff. I spent a lot of time with Gina at nana’s. Dad sent birthday cards and presents but it wasn’t the same, you know?”

“No,” she murmurs, “I don’t know.”

“I’m glad you don’t,” Jake mutters, because he wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

“I’m sorry you do.”

Jake swallows thickly, staring at the scuffs at the end of his shoes. “But if he asked, I think I’d forgive him, you know? Which is super dumb and idiotic and-”

“And makes you Jacob Peralta,” Amy interrupts. His mouth twists into some sort of smile but he doesn’t meet her eyes. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t care too much.”

He finally looks up at her, but her expression is unreadable (mostly because he doesn’t want to read it).

“Call your mom,” Amy says, voice broking no room for argument, “There’s only a couple hours left of our shift, I can handle it.”

“Isn’t it against regulation to have only one detective in the precinct?”

“Yeah.” There’s no inflection to her voice, no place for him to argue. Amy spins on her heel and walks out of the break room, Jake trailing after her, feeling like he is floating without an anchor. She gathers his things for him before shoving them into his hands.

“Amy Santiago breaking a rule?” he finally gasps, mock shocked, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice.

She rolls her eyes and pushes him towards the elevator. “Go take your mom out for supper, you big dummy.”

They reach the elevator and in the moments between hitting the button and the ding of the elevator’s arrival Jake spins around to envelope Amy in a brief hug. “Thank you,” he whispers into her hair.

“Anytime,” she replies, the warmth of her voice lost to his neck. 

He pulls away and slips into the elevator, shouting “I hate Thanksgiving!” at the top of his lungs. The elevator doors close around Amy’s laughter.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time someone asks him if there’s anything going on between them is when Boyle is promoted to detective.

It’s nearly three and a half years into their partnership and they’re better friends than ever. Charles Boyle has worked at the Nine-Nine for longer than Jake, but only got the promotion to detective when one of the higher ups noticed an increase in the number of cold cases solved, linked back to Boyle and the crazy amount of extra hours he spends methodically working each case until it’s solved. 

His first day as detective is kind of a disaster. It reminds him of Amy’s first day at the Nine-Nine, except while Amy was nervous on her first day she was also contradictorily confident; Boyle’s not even a little confident, he’s just insanely nervous.

He trips no less than four times on his way to his new desk and loudly introduces himself to everyone around him. Jake catches Gina’s eyes when he looks past Amy’s bowed head as she works on her paperwork (which is actually probably his since he’s pretty sure she finished hers an hour ago and got bored). 

_Oh no_ , Jake thinks, seeing the glint in Gina’s eyes, _she’s going to eat him alive._

He stands suddenly, taking pity on Boyle, and walks across the small space to introduce the new detective to the best detective the Nine-Nine has to offer (no matter what Amy _claims_ ).

Boyle stands to hurriedly introduce himself to Jake, and spills his burning hot coffee all over the front of Jake’s chest. (Jake soon learns this is a normal occurrence for Boyle and to never do or say anything remotely interesting in Boyle’s vicinity when he is holding any hot beverage.)

“Oh my God,” Boyle shrieks at a pitch higher than any reasonable human should be capable of making. “I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I did that. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_.”

“Hey, man,” Jake offers with a pained smile. “It was an accident, it’s cool.”

“I’ll go and get paper towel.” Boyle darts away (colliding with only two desks this time) before Jake can respond.

He can hear Amy stifling a laugh behind him and he turns slowly to glare at her. “Not a word, Santiago.”

Amy holds her hands up in surrender, a pen threaded through the fingers of her left hand and her mouth twitching up at the corners. Her eyes sparkle when she replies, “I didn’t _say_ anything, Peralta.”

“But we all thought it,” Rosa offers from her desk, looking up at him with a smirk. He turns his glare on her.

“Loudly,” Gina adds with a smug grin from where she’s lounging with her feet up at her administrative desk. He flounders in the empty space between his desk and Boyle’s desk, trying to figure out which of the three women to glare at more. He’s pretty sure this just makes his glare ineffective, eyes darting between them and standing awkwardly while holding his many sopping layers. (He’s beginning to wonder why he wears so many layers because liquid soaks through them so quickly anyways and _hot. coffee._ )

Boyle returns with way more paper towel than practical, and also ignores all normal social manners to invade Jake’s space and personally wipe the coffee off of him. He can _feel_ all three of his friends stifling laughter behind him, and resolutely ignores them.

Boyle, meanwhile, is still rambling his apologies to Jake, so he turns his attention to the shorter man.

“It’s cool,” he assures, “it’s so cool. I mean, it’s actually terribly hot, but it’s cool.”

This situation turns out to be par for the course with Boyle, leading to them becoming really close over the next week (both physically and metaphorically). Which leads to Jake agreeing to eat lunch with Boyle the next Monday, partially because Amy isn’t working and partially because Jake gets along really well with Boyle, coffee spills aside.

“I got divorced two months ago,” Boyle explains without prompting, “and had all this extra time, so I figured, why not just work overtime to solve all these old cases?”

“Yeah,” Jake agrees, a little shocked, “Why not?”

“And so, here I am, finally a detective.”

“Congrats, buddy,” Jake replies, and really means it.

Boyle practically tears up and hides it in a bite of his lunch, which is… Something Jake would rather not know, to be completely honest.

“So are you and Santiago, uh, you know?”

Jake frowns at Boyle around a bite of his peanut butter and gummy worm sandwich, trying his best to ignore the lunch sitting by his elbow that Boyle brought for him. He doesn’t really like where this is going but humours Boyle anyway. Curiosity killed the cat and all that. “Are we what?” 

“You know.” Jake stares blankly at Boyle, silently begging any being listening that Boyle isn’t thinking what Jake thinks he’s thinking. But alas, no one takes any pity on Jake because Boyle’s next question is appalling. “Are you guys smooshing booties?”

“What? No! Ew!” Jake squawks, glaring at Boyle. “No! Ew!” he repeats, “Of course not!” Boyle looks at Jake questioningly. “No,” Jake insists, probably more forcefully than necessary. “Definitely not. It’s Amy and I wouldn’t- I mean no. Ew. It’s Amy. Gross.”

“I’m sorry,” Boyle hurries to exclaim, “I just thought- I mean if you don’t get along I totally get it.”

“What? No we get along fine. We’re just partners and friends.”

“Oh,” Boyle sounds immensely disappointed. “I just thought you guys were really cute together.”

Jake suddenly feels a little sick, like hundreds of butterflies are trying to escape his stomach. He pushes the container of…something, to Boyle. “Here,” he says while standing, “I’m not very hungry anymore.”

Boyle’s entire face lights up.

“Jake, you’re the best!”

 

* * *

 

The first time he cries in front of her is when his mom is in a car accident.

It’s the day before their third anniversary as partners, and he can’t help it when his hands start shaking around the cell phone in his hand as he listens to the tinny voice of Gina’s mom in his ear, pressing the phone harder and harder into the side of his head as each word seems to age him.

Amy notices him shaking first, and her hands are cool where they wrap around his arm and pull him towards the evidence room. It’s as empty and dark as it always is, but his stomach keeps bottoming out as Darlene continues to talk faster and faster. He can only partially focus on the sound of Darlene’s voice and Amy’s cold hands while his mind spins.

He mumbles something that hopefully passes as a farewell to Darlene, before sinking down to his knees and burying his face in his hands. Amy is kneeling in front of him, a reversal of their position when she’s having an anxiety attack. A hand on his shoulder causes him to met here eyes.

He doesn’t try to hide his tears because his mom was in a car accident and she’s in the hospital and she’s okay but she was in a car accident and she’s in the hospital and—

“Jake?”

It’s her soft voice that breaks him, and he folds in on himself, but Amy somehow catches him and he finds his face pressed to her neck and a the silky material of her blouse clutched in his hands. She runs one hand down his spine and cards the other through his too-long curls while his breaths come in heaving gasps against her collarbone.

When Jake finally feels able to breathe again, Amy produces some Kleenex from God knows where and he composes himself enough to go find Gina and tell her what happened. He’s never seen Gina put down her phone so fast in his life, and she doesn’t even attempt to make fun of Amy when she offers to drive the both of them to the hospital.

His mom is fine, and that night he texts Amy a picture of him and his mom smiling up at the camera, both a little teary, both a little battered.

 

* * *

 

The first time his dad tries to contact him is near the Thanksgiving of their fourth year as partners.

He sends Jake an friend request on Facebook. 

Jake becomes livid so suddenly that his body can’t contain his outrage and instead it manifests as bitter laughter that makes Amy’s head jerk up from where she was nodding off at her desk. It’s after midnight, and for that he’s thankful, because it means the only people in their immediate vicinity are Amy and himself and a couple of tired uniforms too far away to hear.

Amy’s eyes are wide as she stares at him warily. “What’s wrong with you?”

He looks up at her, eyes bright with a wildness he’s never felt before. “Come here.”

She frowns but complies and walks around their desks, hovering by his shoulder to look at where he’s pointing to his computer screen. The scent of raspberries and coffee and cinnamon invades his senses, but he’s so furious he barely even notices.

“Roger Peralta?” she reads out loud. “Isn’t that your—” she trails off, frowning as the pieces click. She straightens with outrage. “Your father sent you a friend request on _Facebook_?”

“Yeah!” he shouts, insides churning with unbridled fury. “After twenty-six fucking _years,_ he sends me a friend request!”

Amy shakes her head wordlessly, eyebrows drawn together and heavy over dark eyes, mouth twisting in disgust. “Unbelievable.”

Jake is shaking, hands trembling as he stares at the webpage for so long his vision starts to blur.

Then he starts to laugh again. It sounds hollow and bitter even to his own ears, he barely registers the uniforms who look over curiously before scurrying away under the force of Amy’s glare. She perches on the edge of his desk when his laugh dies off and there’s only an acrid taste left in his mouth.

He shakes his head wordlessly. “I just can’t believe after twenty plus years of nearly complete silence he sends me a _friend_ _request_.” Jake barks out another laugh that burns through his chest. “Actually, scratch that. I can believe he’d do that.” He leans forward and hangs his head low between his knees. “What has my life come too?”

He feels a gentle hand on the back of his neck and fingers carding through his too long curls (he’s really been meaning to get it cut). He scowls at the floor, but it’s hard to be resentful when Amy’s massaging his scalp comfortingly. After a moment he sighs and pushes himself up to sit, her hand falling from his head.

“I just can’t- I mean it’s so,” he trails off, unable to find words for the vicious rage scratching at the inside of his stomach.

Her own eyes are bright with the sharpness of anger, but her voice is soft. “That is,” she agrees, “the biggest act of cowardice I’ve ever seen.”

Another bitter laugh escapes from his chest. “That’s an understatement,” he mutters. The only sound is the faint voices of the uniforms as they leave the squadroom and head down the hall.

“Do you need anything?”

“I need- I just need to work.”

Amy studies him for a long moment, before finally nodding. “Okay.”

Throughout the night Jake bursts out into sudden and bitter laughter before ranting to an attentive and equally outraged Amy, while Amy occasionally looks up a Jake for a moment before her face twists and she shakes her head with a muttered “unbelievable” under her breath.

By the next morning, everyone in the squad knows about it. 

Charles tells him to forget about his dad, riled up in defence of him; Rosa seems like she couldn’t care less, but her shrug is stiff and the look she gives him tells him she’ll do whatever he needs her to; Terry is uncertain, but gives Jake a long speech about how he handled his own father. Gina frowns deeply, even more riled than Charles is and she tells him to tell his father to stick his more unflattering parts in some very creative places. (Gina was the only firsthand witness of his dad’s abandonment and the following tears and anger and bitterness throughout the years; he can’t really blame her for the hatred she holds for the man who helped bring him into the world.)

But the thing is, he is _really_ tempted to accept the request. Because the man was once his hero, someone he was excited to see every day and who he drew pictures for and who would swing him up into the air before a hug and who taught him how to play baseball. He wasn’t always the blurry faced deadbeat father that makes Jake’s blood boil at just a thought.

Roger Peralta used to be his dad.

When he tells her this, Amy’s just supportive.

“Ultimately it’s your decision,” she says quietly across their desks. It’s nearing the end of their shifts and the precinct is relatively calm in the late afternoon. “You’re the one he hurt and you’re the one who gets to decide if you want him in your life again. No one will judge you either way. And if they do, they’ll have to deal with me.”

That draws a grin out of him for the first time since the friend request.

She smiles at him. “I’ve got your back.”

 

* * *

 

The first time she gets shot is the three weeks after their fifth anniversary as partners, and it’s something he never wants to experience ever again.

He hadn’t even heard the gunshot when Rosa’s voice is crackling over the comm in his ear. “Officer down, I repeat, officer down.”

Jake’s heart stops and his ears start ringing. He doesn’t hear the code Rosa calls in, but Charles shoots him a worried look as they continue clearing the building they are in. It’s a procedure that doesn’t take long since they’re already on the second floor. They start to hear the sound of distant sirens about six minutes in, and it feels like years have aged him once they finally emerge into the dark night. 

An ambulance is on the curb, painting the street in red and white light. Two paramedics are crawling out of its belly, loaded down with heavy bags. Charles doesn’t say anything as Jake stands numbly in the doorway, frozen to the spot, and stares towards the alley that had swallowed the two paramedics. One of them reemerges less than a minute later and disappears into the back of the ambulance before reemerging with a spine-board. Jake finally unroots himself and stumbles, barely breathing, to the alley entrance. 

Jake takes in the scene as if he’s underwater, like he’s floating above his own body. There’s a dark, whimpering shape laying on his stomach on the dirty ground, face pressed into the cement and hands cuffed behind his back. Rosa is standing a couple feet from the paramedics, her face darker than he’s ever seen. Her shirt looks wet, hands painted bright red and curled into fists by her sides. Beyond her is a gun and a discarded kevlar vest, the bottom shinning wetly in the flashing light from the ambulance. Jake’s eyes are finally drawn to the two paramedics in the middle of the alley, lifting an unmoving body on a spine board to the gurney, before raising the gurney up. The body is pale and too still, dark hair splayed around a neck brace and that white button-up with the little blue flowers stained bright red.

_Amy_ , his mind helpfully supplies.

The paramedics hurry past him, bundling Amy into the back of the ambulance. It’s quiet for a while, the only sound the quiet whining of the perp and the muffled shouting of the paramedics from the ambulance, until one of them jumps out of the back, slamming the doors shut, and jogs to the driver’s side. Neither Rosa or Charles says anything as the ambulance pulls away from the curb with its sirens wailing. Jake feels like he’s drank liquid nitrogen, insides frozen and numb with fear.

Rosa suddenly curses behind him and kicks the ground, foot bouncing off the concrete with the force of her anger; Charles jumps about a foot in the air and the perp finally stops his snivelling. Jake barely responds, turning slowing to watch Rosa violently yank the perp to his feet and march him to the car they arrived in what feels like eons ago but was probably only twenty minutes. Charles glances at Jake, before picking up the bloody kevlar vest and the perp’s gun and following Rosa. Jake sways in place for a while before trailing after them. He doesn’t say anything on the drive back to the precinct, just stares dumbly out the window, while Rosa explains what happened, voice short and clipped. Jake’s ears are buzzing, like the static on a tv, and he hears Rosa’s words through the haze but doesn’t process them. His mind is blank but his stomach is churning like the gathering storm clouds outside.

When they finally arrive at the precinct Terry is pacing nervously around his desk; even Gina looks worried, her phone face-down on her desk.

Rosa wastes no time. “Heard anything?” she barks.

Terry shakes his head, face openly pained. “They took her to Kings County but we haven’t heard anything since then.”

Rosa snarls as she all but throws the perp into holding, spinning on her heel and stalking towards her desk to fill out her incident report. Charles returns to his desk as well, leaving Jake standing in the middle of the precinct aimlessly, feeling like someone had dropped him in the middle of the ocean without a lifejacket.

“Jake?” 

Jake looks up and tries to force his eyes to focus on Terry’s face. “I’m cool,” he croaks.

Terry doesn’t look convinced, but allows Jake to walk shakily past him to slump at his desk.

The call comes fifteen minutes later, after Rosa finished her report and more or less shoved it in Captain McGinley's face. Terry had called Amy’s parents just a couple minutes before the hospital called him. Her parents were waiting anxiously to drive to New York, the storm that is gathering at the edges of New York making the road from Jersey near impossible to travel. Terry answers the phone and no one even tries to pretend that they’re not eavesdropping.

“Hello? No, I’m not. Sergeant Terry Jeffords, her commanding officer from the Nine-Nine. I should be an emergency contact. Okay. She is? Well how is she? Why not? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we’ll be there.” Terry hangs up and turns to the rest of the squad who have all gathered around his desk. “She’s in surgery right now but they can’t tell us anything else.”

“Well what are we waiting for?” Rosa growls and shoves her way out of the semi-circle around Terry’s desk to stalk to her desk, roughly pulling her jacket on and glaring at everyone while she waits at the elevator. The rest of the squad trails after her, shutting down computers and gathering their things before meeting Rosa in the elevator. They take two cars, Rosa and Jake sitting in tense silence in one car and Charles, Terry, and Gina in another. 

When they arrive they are ushered to a family room to wait for the doctor. It’s another forty minutes of mostly silent panicking and pacing while Amy lays, alone, on a surgery table somewhere in the hospital.

The doctor arrives as it’s nearing seven thirty and thunder is rumbling outside. 

“Amy Santiago?” 

The squad stands as one, turning tired and anxious eyes on the doctor.

“She’s out of surgery,” the doctor explains, flipping through a chart. “The bullet entered on the anterior side of her lower abdomen, right below the edge of her vest, and just missed the iliac crest of her pelvis. It was a through and through, and missed all major organs. She’s in a recovery room right now, but once we move her to ICU in about an hour you can see her.”

“She’ll,” Jake’s breath stutters in his chest. “She’ll be okay though, right?”

The doctor nods, eyes tired but smile comforting when she responds, “We want to keep her in the ICU for a day or two to monitor for signs of infection, and she’ll need rehabilitation therapy, but otherwise she should make a full recovery.”

The rest of the squad sighs in relief behind Jake and his stomach stops churning. The doctor offers them another smile before she turns to leaves the room.

Jake is still standing, numb with relief, when Terry holds out a piece of paper with a phone number scrawled across it. “Will you call Amy’s parents? I need to get back to the precinct to talk to the Captain and complete paper work for this.”

Jake takes the paper mutely and nods as Terry leaves.

Jake is still staring at the paper when the doctor comes in forty minutes later to inform them that Amy is awake and can see visitors now. Rosa stands up first, glaring at all of them as if daring them to try and stop her, before following the doctor out when no one does. Charles fidgets in his plastic chair, Gina beside him and staring blankly at the black screen of her phone.

Jake finally gets enough courage to dial the number. Amy’s mom answers on the first ring, which makes guilt claw at his stomach for waiting so long.

“Hello?” Amy’s mom’s voice is trembling and watery and Jake has to take a steadying breath. 

“Hi, this is Jake Peralta, Amy’s partner from the Nine-Nine.”

Her voice grows distant, calling to Amy’s dad, before returning. “Is she okay? Please, tell me she’s okay,” she begs.

Jake swallows. “Yeah, she’s fine. She’s out of surgery and just woke up. I’m just waiting to go see her.”

“ _Gracias a Dios_ ,” Amy’s mom sobs, before her voice grows distant again, repeating his words to Amy’s dad.

When her voice returns it’s still watery but surprisingly strong. It reminds Jake of Amy after an anxiety attack and he can’t help but smile a little at the thought. “We’ll be up first thing tomorrow, as soon as this storm lets up.”

Jake nods even though she can’t see him, “I’ll tell her.”

Amy’s mom is silent for a beat before continuing, “You’re Jake?”

Jake hesitates before answering, suddenly and irrationally concerned about what Amy has told her parents about him. “Yeah?”

“Amy’s told us so much about you,” her mom says in a shaky voice. “We’re glad she has you and the rest of your squad to watch out for her.”

Jake can’t help but feel as though he could have had her back better tonight, but figures Rosa’s beating herself up enough for all of them. Instead he stammers out his thanks, talking for a couple minutes more before hanging up.

Rosa emerges from the hallway, looking considerably more at ease than when she left to see Amy. She nods at him and jerks her head down the hallway. Charles fidgets in his seat but remains sitting while Gina continues to stare blankly at the screen of her locked phone.

Jake shuffles down the hall to Amy’s room, following Rosa with wide eyes. He pauses outside the door, taking a bracing breath before finally pushing the door open into Amy’s room.

Amy’s half-sitting, propped up against the pillows. Her face is pale, devoid of the minimal makeup she wears, and her hair is gathered in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck. The room is mostly dark, the only light streaming in from the open door. There’s an IV line in the back of her right hand, dark blood pumping through the line, and a white clip attached to the middle finger of her left hand, the cord running to a heart monitor. She looks exhausted, but gives him a small smile.

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Hey,” she murmurs back, eyes dark and unfocused but _open_. 

“You really scared us there,” Jake mumbles, stepping farther into the room. 

She offers him another small smile. “Sorry.”

Jake takes another step towards her. “I think we’ll forgive you.”

He’s at her bedside now, and Amy’s smile grows. “Thanks.”

He sits in the chair, hands rubbing nervously between his knees. “I talked to your parents. The roads are all stormy so they’ll be up first thing tomorrow.”

Amy squints at him, “Thanks. Any chance you could bring me my glasses tomorrow? My contacts are super dry and I have a feeling I’ll need them.”

Jake nods earnestly, “Of course.”

She tilts her head at him in consideration. “You know,” there’s a teasing lilt to her voice that he had thought he’d never hear again, “you’re a lot more agreeable when you’re in a hospital.”

Jake laughs for the first time in over three hours.

 

* * *

 

The first time he ruins one of her dates it is because she asks him to.

“Amy, as much as I love teasing you about your romantic life, this guy is one-hundred percent a complete and utter jackass.”

Her face wavers for a split second, as if caught between agreeing with him or trying to argue, before she shakes her head. “The date’s in two hours.”

“So?”

“It’s rude. I can’t just blow him off,” she replies, but she doesn’t look convinced.

“Sure you can.”

Amy shakes her head, before she shifts to the defensive, a coping mechanism he is intimately familiar with. “I can take care of myself,” she replies hotly.

“I know you can,” Jake hurriedly assures, because he does know, she can easily kick his ass everyday of the week, but that doesn’t mean he’s not concerned for her. “But you’re one of my best friends, I still worry.”

Her face softens a little, easing from prickly to understanding. “I know you do.”

Jake’s neck is suddenly too hot for the collar of his shirt, too hot for his own skin, and so he does what he does best, he jokes. “Aw, Santiago, I’m flattered but you’re coming on a little strong.”

Amy knows him far to well because she just gives him a knowing look before rolling her eyes. “See you later, Peralta.”

“Bye,” he responds, far too happily, as she leaves the precinct.

He gets the text message around seven thirty; all it reads is _You were right. Get me out of here._

The full-body fist pump should probably be concerning, considering he’s watching _Die Hard_ for the forty-billionth time and just spilt half a bowl of sugary cereal on his pjs.

The restaurant has some fancy name, but looks pretty shady so he can’t help the glance towards the alley that years of being a cop have ingrained in him. There’s no one there, but he can pretty easily imagine it as a frequent stop for drug dealers.

He spots them easily, and it’s also the first time he’s seen her so dressed up and the tap-dance his heart starts performing has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the cereal he ate earlier. He’s pretty sure. Most likely.

“Amy Santiago?” he makes his voice as obnoxious as possible. The narrowing of her eyes and clenching of her jaw goes unnoticed by her date, which is too bad, because Jake’s pretty sure that look alone would have sent her date running.

Her date looks back and forth between them, a little curious and extremely arrogant. _Oh yeah_ , Jake thinks, _I’m_ _going to_ enjoy _this_. “I’m sorry,” her date says, “ _Who_ are you?” The rake of his eyes over Jake’s body makes even him feel uncomfortable, he can’t even imagine what it’s like to be a woman around this asshole. He shoots Amy a quick glance, and sees relief flash across her eyes when she realizes that he gets it.

Jake holds out his hand to The Asshole. “Craig Cleppertin,” he says, way too loudly for a conversation that doesn’t involve screaming over the winds of a tornado. Jake shakes his hand over-exaggeratedly. The Asshole’s nose twists as he sneers at Jake, before wiping his hand on a napkin in the most obvious way possible.

Jake glances at Amy again, who gives him her patented _Get-a-Move-on-Peralta_ look. He should really remind her to get a trademark on that look because she could make a fortune off of it.

He turns to Amy and raises his obnoxiousness to an eleven. “I haven’t seen you since the last family reunion.”

The Asshole chokes on his cheap wine. “You’re _related_ to this idiot?”

“Through marriage,” Amy responds through gritted teeth.

Jake claps The Asshole on the back probably harder than necessary. “And she won’t let me forget it.” He laughs too loudly.

“Well he doesn’t look like a Mexican so I figured.” The Asshole has the confidence to wink, which looks more like a face spasm than anything, so Jake can’t help but stare at him in slight confusion, before Amy kicks him right on his ankle bone, that painful bump that protrudes right above his sneakers. He stifles a whimper of pain and glares at Amy; she’s going to pay for that.

“Did you get that,” Jake leans towards the table conspiratorially and lowers his voice, “that _you-know-what_ looked at?”

The Asshole looks at Amy warily. “What’s he talking about?” he demands.

Jake composes his face into a sheepish expression, hoping that The Asshole is too distracted by his own expression in the spoon to notice that Jake’s trying desperately to keep his laughter under control. “My faaaaavowite cousin here has a really serious skin condition.”

“Skin condition?” both Amy and The Asshole exclaim at the same time.

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Jake continues, knowing that very soon he will not be able to keep his laughter in. “It takes up most of her back. Really red and flakey.” He turns to Amy again. “Did you get that weepiness under control yet?”

The Asshole is gone before Jake even turns back. He laughs victoriously and flops down in the vacated chair. People at the surrounding tables are openly staring at them now but he ignores them, electing to lean across the table and steal Amy’s fork so he can steal some of Amy’s food.

“You’re welcome,” he says in a voice that is not quite braggy but pretty damn close.

“My hero,” Amy says flatly, but there’s relief in her eyes so he counts it as a thank you. 

“So how’d you know he wasn’t _the one_?”

“Well I told him I was a cop and he said he applied for the academy but decided he was too good for it.”

Jake barks a laugh and tries not to spray macaroni on her; when he fails she takes it in stride, used to his eating habits from sitting across from him for over five years, and easily wipes a little bit of spit from her cheek with only minimal cringing. Amy continues to regale him with the misfortunes of her short-lived date while sharing her dinner with him.

“Sexist _and_ racist?” Jake exclaims around a mouthful of her macaroni. “Wow, Santiago, go big or go home.”

“Ha ha,” she replies tonelessly, but he can see the crease at the corner of her mouth that means she’s fighting a smile.

He insists on paying at the same time she does, but lets her pay because he is a gentleman and a feminist and also seriously broke.

They do catch a couple drug dealers in that alley as they’re leaving the restaurant about an hour after he arrived, and it might be the best not-a-date date’s he’s ever been on.

 

* * *

 

Then the notice that they’re getting a new captain comes, and a lot of things change for Jake.

Even the role Amy plays in his life changes, in which she becomes, impossibly, even more important to him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Title from _Mess is Mine_ by Vance Joy.
> 
> 2\. I’ve literally been working on this piece since October, and so who even knows when the second part will be finished. There’s like 1000 words on it so like ??? Who knows??? I sure don't. 
> 
> As an aside, the whole estranged-father-of-x-amount-of-years-sends-a-friend-request-on-facebook was a Thing That Actually Happened to me like two years ago?? And like?? Who?? Does?? That?? My father apparently, and now Roger Peralta in this story because that seems like him.
> 
> 3\. This was supposed to be done like a week ago but then I saw Wonder Woman and it literally Changed My Entire Life so I’ve been distracted and counting down the days until I get to see it again instead of finishing this like I was supposed to. Also there was two scenes that honestly felt like pulling teeth for about two months while I edited the rest of it so I _finally_ forced them out. Very painfully.


End file.
